It was also the witness of the magnificent and sustained stoïcism on the part numerous Belgian soldiers who succeeded each other to defend it.
The Death Trench is a sacred spot, sacred by the acts of courage and heroism that were accomplished there, and sacred by the blood that was shed here, it is the tomb of hundreds of brave heroes.
14.—Company commander’s post near the Yserdam, at Dixmude, in front of the canal of Handzaeme (leftbank).
16.—Concrete dug-out south of the railway bridge at Dixmude (left bank).
These two shelters mark out the portion of the Belgian front which suffered the most by German bombardment with trench-mortars shells and bombs.
During the dreadful days of May 1916, our first line, facing Dixmude was subjected to awful firing; the embankment of the Yser, behind which our men were sheltered, was overthrown, the shelters broken down, the relief posts destroyed. All the work of the trenches which had taken eighteen months of patient toil to erect was annihilated in a few days and transformed into a horrible chaos. Hundreds of brave soldiers were torn to pieces by the bursting of German trench mortar shells, the effects of which were so terrible that in falling they dug craters of 10 meters diameter, thus smashing up the strongest shelters, and crushing and burying under the ruins all those who had taken refuge there. After the storm calmed down (and it was only calmed when our mortars arrived, affording us then the opportunity to juggle with those of the adversary), the Belgian soldiers with their habitual tenacity, undertook to rebuild their defensive works. Night and day, they worked patiently and obstinately on, and in the face of the enemy which was watching them from the opposite side of the bank, managed ruins out of the ruins that were accumulated there, to erect new lines of defence, stronger and better established than the first. They were composed, besides firing parapets for infantrymen, of numerous shelters for snipers and machine-gunners, rest and waiting shelters, relief posts, fighting battle posts for unit commanders, etc.... Earth, wood, iron, concrete, all were put together and used to constitute a formidable entrenched line, which was held till the end of the war.
From amongst these numerous shelters, two have been preserved: the first at the South of the Bridge-rail of Dixmude, is situated in the centre of the bend formed by the Yser in front of the town. The second was used as a fighting post for the commander of the company entrusted to defend the portion of the embankment, situated in front of the Handzaeme Canal. That particular point was specially momentous and to be watched, because it meant there to forbid the inroad in our lines of the Germans troops, which, under the cover of the Handzaeme canal banks, could, mounted on little boats berthed at Dixmude, try a landing on the West bank of the river Yser.
15.—The Flour-Mill of Dixmude.
How can one recall the battle of Dixmude without having before one’s eyes the vision of the flour-mill rising far above the ruins of the little Flemish town? One saw it in spite of oneself; in fact nearly always one felt its presence. During the four years of trench warfare it was the vigilant eye watch of the enemy. An eye with a look of fire and iron. An eye which had the command over powerful artillery, over numerous minenwerfers, and even over simple snipers who coldly struck down the imprudent and foolhardy ones who ventured to brave it, very often without being aware of it.
At the beginning of the war, a legend ran that the massif construction of the corn-mill was built by the Germans. The authorised opinion of E. Hosten in his book entitled the Agony of Dixmude gives the lie to this assertion in the following terms: “It is quite evident at the present day that the platform of the huge cube of cement which formed the corn-mill of Dixmude was not erected on the shore of the Yser, solely to receive heavy German artillery which from that matchless observatory could have overlooked and swept-away all the surroundings”.